


a waltz with masked devils

by everlastingtremors



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Extremely Dubious Consent, Hand Jobs, M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sadism, Sensory Deprivation, Sexual Abuse, in which the vulnerability up debuff is used in creative ways, it veers straight into non con territory in chapter 3 because lahabrea is a nasty man. sorry, it was supposed to be a oneshot but then i had more ideas: the fic, local ascian sexually manipulates man with zero self esteem. more at 11, porn with a small semblance of plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:06:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22808326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everlastingtremors/pseuds/everlastingtremors
Summary: Absolute domination in exchange for the assured safety of his comrades. It was a laughably easy deal to accept.
Relationships: Lahabrea/Thancred Waters
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	1. Chapter 1

_“Thancred. Something is amiss.” Her voice was firm. Empty eyes hard. It was not a question, but rather a matter-of-fact._

_“Nothing of importance, Y’shtola. I assure you.”_

The damn woman was perceptive, but he supposed he wouldn’t have it any other way. Better that than the alternative, Thancred reasoned. Still— he made his way to his destination with extra care, steps quiet, occasionally coming to a halt to see if he could hear the Miqo’te’s ghostly gait in his wake. His left forearm ached, and he gave it a passive rub as he walked, thoughts transfixed on the unique wound beneath gauntlet and bandage. The Ascian had truly outdone himself. Etching an image of the location of their next meeting on his exposed flesh with invisible blade as usual— only this time, right in front of the other scions. A purposeful act, to be certain. He had no choice but to excuse himself in the midst of the group’s dinner, hustle to the privacy of the bed offered to him by the Night’s Blessed, and quickly tend to the wound before the bleeding grew noticeable. Suspicious behaviour, to say the least. No wonder Y’shtola had stopped him on his way out of the Greatwoods in spite of his threadbare excuse. Another patrol in the span of the same evening? He at least thought they would take it for well-intended vigilance.

Despite the sole fleeting glance spared to the etching before he covered it for good, Thancred knew precisely where he was meant to go and meant to do. A ruin he had passed many times, shrouded deep within the pale trees of Lakeland on a road that shot off from the main path to the Crystarium. Close enough to warrant his immediate presence, but far enough out of the way where they would not have any hope of being disturbed. Lahabrea had a knack for choosing their location, he thought, sourly. But he would expect no less from a well-practiced puppetmaster.

Up ivory steps beneath the cover of night, he passed into the belly of a crumbling building, then down into its bowels when he noticed the staircase leading down into an undercroft. No doubt the Ascian would be waiting in the deepest, darkest part of the ruin; such was his style.

At least that much was predictable. In the dark he could make out a room at the far end of a corridor, illuminated by a few dimly lit candles within ancient sconces. The sole sign of life for at least a mile, accompanied by the tell-tale silhouette of a seated figure at the farthest wall. Thancred hesitated in the doorway. _No turning back_ , he knew very well, and yet he inhaled a steeling breath before reaching for his gunblade. How odd to unsheathe his weapon in front of such a celebrated enemy, only to set it aside against the wall rather than take up arms. “You quite enjoy complicating matters, don’t you. Couldn’t have waited ’til I was fully covered before making your summons?”

Lahabrea said nothing. In silence he watched from his perch atop dais-mounted throne, a seat undoubtedly once reserved for a figure of high esteem in the days before the flood. Cheek propped on a knuckle, his exposed mouth offered no hint of emotion. A flat line. Unnervingly difficult to read. With the shake of his head and shrug of his shoulders, Thancred approached. “Insufferable,” he murmured, coming to a halt a few feet directly in front of the throne.

“I don’t recall granting you permission to speak,” Lahabrea said at last, voice tinged with a hiss.

“No, but I must take what little I can, given the circumstances.” Grey eyes nearly rolled in his head. Pompous bastard. They exchanged a mutual stare, Thancred at a disadvantage with his gaze exposed. A gaze plainly unenthused. It would be laughable to think he was fooling either of them, however— the mere thought of what was to come aroused a faint simmer in the back of his throat, the front of his pants. _Twelve preserve,_ he thought, _contain yourself._

Lahabrea exhaled, though it was more akin to a grunt of disapproval. Thancred watched, careful not to betray any further enthusiasm in the slightest. An Ascian’s toy wasn’t permitted to relish in the experience, and Lahabrea was always more than eager to make that much known. “Strip,” he commanded in cold tone— colder than Thancred would have liked.

With a huff, the scion obeyed. Such was the way of their exchange. One made the demands, the other fulfilled them. Thancred slid from his coat, half-assedly folded it, then tossed it to the side. The sudden lack of heavy protection was almost akin to nudity even before he even began to unclasp his gauntlets and breastplate. One glove, then the other. Skin-tight undershirt, grabbed by the back of the collar and tugged over his head. He worked as slowly as he knew he would be allowed, wondering if in doing so, he could tease Lahabrea for once rather than the other way around.

It was a simple deal, really. The Ascian seemed almost human in his demand all those years ago: he would leave the scattered scions alone on the First, watch from the shadows, and maintain the illusion of death he had suffered in front of the Warrior of Light. In exchange, all Thancred had to do was debase himself when Lahabrea so desired. Though the Ascian had used the phrase ‘ _I will own you_ ,’ it was easier to digest the idea of periodic humiliation than being the property of such a twisted man. A delicate deal with the devil, made all too tantalizing with the absence of the Warrior of Light to aid in warding him off. His body, for the lives of his comrades? A laughably unbalanced trade. One he almost deserved; after all, if he couldn’t defend the ones he cared about in any other way, then his fate was sealed.

Unbuckled choker joined the pile of shedded garments. Thancred moved to unclasp his pants when Lahabrea interrupted him with a harsh “No. That is _mine_ to remove.” _Yes, of course, that much should have been obvious_ , Thancred thought with the snide wrinkle of his nose. Again, dangerously close to rolling his eyes. Folding his arms across his chest, he glanced to one side with a frown as Lahabrea looked him over. It was a strange fact to acknowledge; that his humanity had been left at the door, and that the man who watched him keenly saw little more than a plaything. Yet this was his choice. He was here of his own accord, and when Lahabrea commanded him to kneel, Thancred yielded with little hesitance.

A lazy flick of a gloved finger. A sudden pressure around his thighs and ankles. The scion didn’t need to look down to see the shadow-shrouded cords manifest and slide between the gap in his folded limbs to tighten into a harsh frog tie. If he had any intention of backing out— which he didn’t, though he once might have— it was too late now. With silent resignation he folded his arms behind his back, and though he was prepared for what came next, the suddenness in which the next set of cords appeared and fastened around his body caught him slightly off-guard. The friction of shadow against flesh made him shift nervously, and though he fully attempted to keep his wrists separated as best he could to try and trick Lahabrea into making a looser tie, the cords forced his limbs together and brought his bound arms toward the small of his back with a jolt.

His arousal quickened as the cord slid between the insides of his legs, rough and taut. Harness wrapped around his crotch. His dick, ever the sensitive one, began to harden. A heat swirled inside of him, and he again tried to move a little, this time hindered greatly by the ropes that now bound him so firm that the skin beneath the bindings ached ever so slightly. Thancred watched Lahabrea with expectant eyes, careful to try and steady his breathing. He wondered if the bastard was making the ropes by his crotch shift ever so slightly; despite his best efforts to be still and prevent further arousal from the friction of his bindings, his cock was insistent that something was stimulating him and hardened faster.

All it took was a blink, and Lahabrea had vanished from his throne. Thancred tensed. He attempted to glance over his shoulder, only to feel a sudden hand in his hair and have his head tugged upward. Even with his chin forcefully craned toward the ceiling, he couldn’t see the Ascian, yet at least now he knew Lahabrea was directly behind him.

“Your arrogance is a most irritating trait,” Lahabrea crooned, and in an instant confirmed Thancred’s suspicion of external stimulus. An invisible force massaged his length, and the scion closed his eyes with a sharp inhale. It felt so damn good— a stroke of heavenly precision from the devil himself. Lahabrea released his head, but the stroking continued, and Thancred uttered a groan, keeping his chin tilted of his own accord. A teasing hand job through the thick fabric of his pants, he squirmed in his bonds and let out a gasping whine when it abruptly stopped. Lahabrea offered a small smile, now in front of him. The tips of his clawed gauntlet brushed against his neck, then tapped the underside of his jaw. “I’ll see you broken of that soon enough. Rest assured.”

He could feel the wet of his precum, which made it all the worse. Thancred closed his eyes and attempted to rein himself in, only to feel a slight weight over the bridge of his nose and around the back of his head. A blindfold? That was new. His sense of predictability was beginning to vanish, and in its stead came faint anxiety. Lips parted to speak, only for him to instantly forget what he had intended to say when he felt a cock force its way into his mouth. The unexpectedness and girth made him sputter, but this wasn’t his first blow job, and it wouldn’t be the last. Every time he found himself in this situation, he debated whether or not to bite down as hard as he could just to see what Lahabrea would do, and every time he decided against it. Less for his own sake, and more due to the fear of stepping out of line, and what consequence that might have for the allies who seemed only too thinly defended by this arrangement. So he sucked, working his tongue along the length of Lahabrea’s member, lips intent on offering pleasure, though it felt as though the Ascian was purposely trying to complicate the affair by thrusting gently into his mouth, nearly gagging him despite his best efforts. The taste of salty fluid oozed against his tongue, but his thoughts were preoccupied with bringing Lahabrea to climax as soon as possible so that he might be rewarded with his own. His dick throbbed in his pants, rock hard, and he writhed a little when Lahabrea’s breathing quickened and he released a long, taunting moan. Hands tightened in his hair.

He ran the top of his tongue against the bottom of Lahabrea’s shaft, almost pleased with his work when he felt the Ascian tense and the wanton thrusting ceased. He prepared to swallow the load, but as he worked Lahabrea to his peak, Thancred felt him withdraw. He grimaced, but the pressure in his pants was otherwise too much for him to really care about what Lahabrea was scheming. _Twelve,_ he thought, _You’re going to prolong this as much as you can, aren’t you?_

Gut swirled with a pleasurable heat, from groin to the base of his ribcage. Blood pulsed in his cock, each beat a reminder of how sensitive the area had become. With uneven breath, he waited in darkness, blind to whatever was about to come next. The anticipation was almost palpable in his mouth, and fingers flexed in their bindings with eager desire. Yet nothing came, and despite his best efforts to try and decipher Lahabrea’s movements through sound alone, he couldn’t determine where Lahabrea had gone or where he stood in relation to his kneeling form.

Eventually, he dared to speak: “Lahabrea. What are you d—”

Only to be interrupted by a hand on his shoulder, forcing him forward until his face scraped against the stone. Eyes widened beneath the blindfold as he felt another hand reach around to his front and unclasp his pants. Abdomen trembled with shaking breath, and Lahabrea yanked it down to expose his ass and cock, the rope around his crotch dissipating for a brief instant to allow for his pants to fall before they reformed, snug against his bare, chiseled pelvis. “How many times must I repeat myself, _whelp_? You speak when _I deem it so!_ ”

Cheeks spread. Lahabrea mounted him from behind, and Thancred gasped. The Ascian’s dick felt slick and full inside him, and he briefly wondered what had been used as lubricant before Lahabrea began to thrust. Mind went blank, and he shivered with each forward roll, freely groaning with pleasure as Lahabrea rode him. Jaw hung agape after a certain point, and beneath the blindfold, his eyes rolled back as he drank in the successive waves of pain and ecstasy. Then arms hooked around him from beneath his armpits, and Lahabrea went harder, digging his claws into Thancred’s chest as he moaned. There was getting scratched during sex, and then there was this: hard, deep, jagged gashes made with every clench of the Ascian’s hands. Now the pain was beginning to outweigh the pleasure, but both sensations gripped him with confusing strength. Groaning turned to grit teeth, and he wished he had a free hand to press against his mouth and stifle the pained yells bubbling in his throat. Lahabrea bit down on his shoulder, mild in comparison to his chest, slick with his own blood. “Tear me— _ah_ — to shreds, why don’t you—!” Thancred snapped, voice trailing off into a full-fledged scream as metal claws tore down his torso from collarbone to sternum, violent and insatiable, determined to rip his flesh into bleeding ribbons. 

The scion only distantly registered the fangs tearing at his shoulders, the rhythmic rocking of their intertwined bodies, then a sudden thick warmth that oozed within, Lahabrea releasing his load inside him. Everything else felt secondary to the unceremonious mutilation of his body, to the point where when Lahabrea finally pulled out, he was fully relieved that his stinging, burning chest was permitted to simmer rather than be further raked open. Fluids dripped from his ass, his torso, and though he was fully prepared to be sullied, he was uncomfortably slick with moisture, more than content to lay idle in recovery.

Unfortunate that they were only just getting started. Again, a hand slid into his hair and yanked him upright with a sudden jolt that sent a sharp ache through his scalp. Thancred’s chest heaved, starved for breath. The air kissed his open wounds, fuelling the irritation of his red, swollen gashes. Every involuntary spasm shifted the ropes between his thighs, reminding him that in spite of everything, there was a hardened cock in desperate need of play.

One hand took hold of the collar of his harness, while the one in his hair retreated to slide beneath his chin. Without the support of Lahabrea’s grip, he surely would have just collapsed or at least tumbled forward a little, but slowly— slowly, he pulled himself together for the next round of torture. If Lahabrea’s goal had been to shut him up, then the plan worked. His jaw hung open, panting, and for the first time since they’d gotten started, his thoughts were fully fixated on the moment. Nothing that came before, and nothing that would come after seemed to matter anymore.

“You stubbornly disobey without fear of repercussion. How bold, coming from a hollow husk. _I_ am ageless. I am perfection. And you _will_ come to give me due reverence.” Lahabrea always did enjoy the sound of his own voice. Thancred listened, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat with every thick swallow. “If you refuse to kneel willingly, then I have no choice but to take your voice from you.”

A peculiar magick radiated from the hand that cupped his jaw. He braced himself for pain, but none came— at least not directly from the hand. Thancred gasped as every sensation in his body came to a sudden head. He could feel each sharp pinprick from his wounds, a thousand tiny knives assaulting him at once. The wet of his blood rolled down his ribs and abdomen with such intensity that he could visualize exactly where the blood was, and where it was going. The burn of the ropes which had begun to grow dull returned with a vengeance. His hands, unravaged, were drowned out by the cacophony of injury and lust. Eyes wide beneath the blindfold, he felt the invisible force return to his member and begin to stroke him once more. In an instant, his defences were utterly torn down, and he was left a _vulnerable_ , shivering husk.

It was an indescribable sensation. Every nerve in his groin screaming with pleasure, no longer competing with the pain but working alongside it, every sensation both simultaneous and amplified. His jaw wagged in Lahabrea’s hand, and he whined. The only sound he could manage, and it was a pathetic, sharp whimper. A trembling “ _Aaaa….aaaaa…aaaaahh…!_ ” that grew abruptly loud near the end. He quivered as the strokes turned to something he could only call vibration, a fondling so intense that he wanted nothing more than to keel over and jerk himself off to completion. But hands hung uselessly from their bindings, shoulders twitching, Lahabrea’s grip on his collar once again the only thing that kept him upright.

_Let me cum,_ he wanted to scream, but actual words felt a world away from his moaning tongue. Back arched. His lower body tensed and he pinched his tied legs together as though it would help, only to find the friction of the ropes multiplied the ecstasy tenfold. He was an inch away from orgasm, so close to that brief moment of paradise, but for some reason it evaded him. He panted, writhed, whined, and all the while Lahabrea watched him squirm.

The magick intensified. Thancred’s jaw snapped open in a silent scream, too overwhelmed to release anything more than a string of gasps. He pulled forward to no avail, driven by raw instinct and little else. The heat in his groin was a zealous flame, radiating throughout his entire body, demanding every fraction of his mental capacity.

“If you want me to bring it to an end, _say it_.”

It was as though he could feel his load at the tip of his cock, hot and ready to release, but he simply couldn’t manage it. In his frenzied thoughts, he tried to think of what could possibly be stopping him. But there was no logic behind it, no rhyme or reason— just an Ascian’s twisted magicks that stimulated him until his entire body ached from denial. All he had to do was speak, but words were far too difficult, shoved aside by his feral vocalizations. Breathless gasps, weak moans.

“Nothing? Finally you choose to bite your tongue? Pitiful.”

He screamed internally at the injustice— purposefully working him into such a state, then denying him a climax until he could speak when he distinctly _couldn’t_ — that was the point, of course, but Thancred’s mind cried out as though explaining it to Lahabrea would make him realize that this was _not his fault._ As though the magicks that worked through him were born of ignorance and not purposeful intent.

Lahabrea pulled away, taking his spell with him, yet even as Thancred collapsed into a heap on the ground, body trembling, the dam in his groin stood firm, unbroken. If he had the strength he would have bashed his brow against the ground in frustration, but the sudden and complete disappearance of all stimuli left him numb all over. He cursed himself for his earlier attempt at wresting a bit of power from Lahabrea’s iron grip with his words. Wishing he had just silently taken the violent fuck from behind. A desperate man was a sad sight to behold. Thancred was only thankful that he couldn’t see a damn thing; at least that included himself and his ruined, shivering form.

He searched for a way to appeal to Lahabrea, to salvage what was left of a miserable situation. Even as he felt himself regain a semblance of voice, he hesitated, fearing the possibility of another all-consuming wave of pleasure. Eventually Thancred murmured into the stone: “F-forgive me.”

“You think yourself deserving of a pardon?” Vaguely Thancred placed Lahabrea upon his throne once more from the direction of his voice, provided he hadn’t been turned around during that whole ordeal. He dared not speak further, even in reply. He wouldn’t risk it— the thought of being pushed to the very brink of orgasm once again was unbearable. Unbearable!

Yet the orgasmic force roused once more in his groin. A slower build this time. “Gods, no—” he whispered, voice growing a little louder as he quickly petitioned mercy: “I will do anything. I— I can’t—” _Bear it again_ , he had intended to say, but his voice withered away into another shameless whine. Eyes widened, and his whimpering intensified.

“Anything? Is this how far you’ve fallen, scion? Such blatant proof that you and your ilk are unfit to even _exist_. However, if you are so eager…”

Thancred’s thoughts dissolved into senseless begging that served no one but himself. Grey eyes glazed over with the haze usually accompanied by that moment of release, but this time, there was no relief to be found with it. His face burned, chest stung as he brushed it against the floor on accident. Right on the cusp, staring his orgasm in the face, yet unable, _painfully unable_ to reach out and take it!

“I will indulge you on one condition.” Lahabrea’s voice felt close. Intimately so. “That I bring an end to all of your fellow scions— and you will aid me.”

All anticipation to hear the condition vanished in an instant. _Never_. The answer came to him clear as day even in the perfect storm of swollen pleasure. And Lahabrea knew it without it even needing to be spoken out loud. With a scoff, the Ascian withdrew, leaving Thancred in his immobilized agony. “Meaningless prattle. As I thought.”

Indulgence promptly shut down and denied, but at the very least, Lahabrea took pity on him and left him numb once more to lie defeated with nothing to think about except his throbbing, aching, _pulsing_ cock. He knew not how much time passed before Lahabrea spoke up again, but surely it was long enough for Lahabrea to savour the sight. Maybe even long enough for him to jerk himself off, but whether the moaning he heard was Lahabrea’s or his own, he couldn’t tell. “You _will_ behave. Else my hand will be forced to leave you in such a state for far longer than a few fleeting minutes. One more display of disobedience, and I will drive you ’til you go mad with desire.”

The fight inside him was long gone. Thancred nodded, weakly, still too afraid to speak any unnecessary words. With a submission that made him sick, he shifted slightly to offer his member to Lahabrea. Each inhale of his broad chest accompanied by the pain of mauled flesh and uneven, lusting breath.

“Who do you serve?” Lahabrea asked. Thancred could almost see the taunting smirk on his masked face.

“You,” Thancred panted, only to immediately deem the answer insufficient and add, “Lahabrea.”

“When do you speak?”

“W-when you allow it.”

“ _What are you?”_

His silver tongue could not help him now. The scion did not know the answer, and the pressure of misspeaking boiled in the back of his dry throat. “I am nothing,” he said at last, searching Lahabrea’s past quips in mad pursuit of the right words. “Broken. Imperfect. Pathetic.” He thought briefly of someone, _anyone_ else witnessing this sorry sight. Chest seized with mortification. Finally he stammered, “I am your’s.”

The thrum of magick crept back into his bones. A sensitivity that began in his legs and worked its way through his muscles back to his cock. No, not again. Not again! Thancred broke into a moan before he could even think to beg. “I am—” he started, made aware of a new feeling. This time the world collapsed into perfect silence. He could not hear the blood in his eardrums, the faint whistle of wind through the collapsing corridors, or even his last ditch attempt at appealing to Lahabrea’s ego: “I am— anything— _anything_ you desire!”

First his ears went silent, followed by smell and taste. The coppery scent of his blood died in an instant, as did the fleeting traces of cum on his tongue. The world vanished around him and all he could feel was the powerful orgasmic wave that came over him all at once. Nothing else to focus on, nothing else to feel. Nothing but a rising heat that grew and grew and grew, until there was nowhere left for it to go and exploded. Thancred came with a pitiful moan that started low and ended loud, cum spurting from his member, and for a brief moment afterward he rode the high of his release, almost willing to offer all the gratitude he had to give to the one who had orchestrated every scene in the show.

When the world returned, the magicks that bound him dissipated like dust on the wind, and he was truly permitted a collapse as every muscle in his body loosened at once and his arms fell uselessly at his sides. A peace settled over him, and the knowledge that his erection would eventually fade had never been sweeter. His eyes, fogged with exertion, almost threatened to close and demand rest there and then. It would have been a blessing to forget his pathetic display, however briefly. Cheeks burned with humiliation.

Just when he had thought he’d seen all Lahabrea had to offer. It was a mistake he would not make again. A mistake he _could not afford_ to make again. Made all the more poignant when the Ascian came into eyeshot one final time, face aglow with his sigil, and leered down at him. Then Thancred blinked, and Lahabrea was gone.

The deed was done, their pact fulfilled— until the next time his arm burned with magicked scratches, which he could only pray to the Twelve was no time soon. It took every last ounce of his determination and willpower to slide up into a sitting position, flinching every time the wounds on his torso were disturbed in the slightest. At the very least, he could mend himself with the potions he’d brought before heading back… or so was the plan, until he dully realized that a series of vials laid shattered around his garments. A final insult to injury, but what did he expect? Was it truly a walk of shame if he wasn’t limping from being nailed in the ass? Arms weak from a lack of proper blood circulation fumbled with his pants, and finding no success in latching the clasps together, he laid back down on his back to try and knead the life back into them. No potions meant having to rely on his clothes to hide the black and blue bruises that were beginning to bloom across his body in the tell-tale pattern of elaborate bindings. More importantly, it meant that he couldn't properly don his breastplate. Not when his chest had been so thoroughly violated. The mere thought of any fabric making contact with his wounds made his body seize preemptively seize.

If anyone happened to see him before he cleaned up, it would certainly be fun to try and explain himself.

* * *

“Who has done this to you?”

He would have gotten away with it and no one would have been the wiser. If only Y’shtola, _damn woman_ , had not been waiting for him at the gates to Slitherborough when all the others were fast asleep in preparation for their next move. Arms folded across her chest, she had grabbed him by the wrist, dragged him to her quarters, and now here they sat, Thancred sprawled across a wooden chair while Y’shtola tended to his wounds, deep and numerous.

“I don’t suppose you would believe me if I said sin eater attack,” Thancred muttered, eyes heavy with fatigue. Even so, he saw the way her face hardened, jawline growing taut, both unamused and unable to accept such an answer. He sighed. “No one of importance, Y’shtola. I said so earlier.”

“You would give me that farcical answer, knowing full well ’tis I who must suffer the pain of remaining ignorant to my comrade’s plight?” She paused, and the soothing white glow of her healing hands fell dim. Thancred inhaled sharply through his nostrils at the sudden return of the sting. There was anger in those empty Miqo’te eyes, so much so that it drew out a tinge of guilt. “You have been _maimed_ , Thancred. Perhaps it would not have been so if your _allies_ had been there for you.” Heavy emphasis on the word _allies,_ as though he didn’t feel bad enough.

“The matter is complicated. I assure you— I left fully aware of the consequences of my actions.” Closing his eyes, he lamented that instead of crawling into bed and falling asleep for as long as the situation permitted, he was here trying to justify himself.

“Fully aware of _this_? And you had expected us to be alright with it? Your _assurances_ are doing little to assure me of anything.”

“I had _expected_ you all to be occupied, and I had _expected_ to be better equipped with tonics. Plainly, neither happened to be the case.” For all of Lahabrea’s troublesome behaviour, at the very least the image of their meeting place had been healed over when Y’shtola forced him to remove the bandage. All that remained was an empty canvas of flesh.

Y’shtola huffed in agitation, a long exhale that said ‘ _you are testing my patience_ ’. “Is there a single good reason as to why I shouldn’t rouse the others and alert them to this threat, Thancred? A _single reason_?”

“Because they have enough to worry about, as do you. I would not keep secrets if the lot of us were in danger, Y’shtola. Believe me when I say it is of no concern to the other scions, nor the Warrior of Darkness.”

“None of my concern?” Thancred’s grey eyes jolted open, alert, when she slammed a fist against her table so hard that it rattled. Gods. He had seen Y’shtola enraged before, but to see those eyes, devoid of life as they were, looking right through him… “ _You_ are my concern, Thancred! Are you truly so thick as to believe any of us would not concern ourselves deeply with a threat to _you_? Surely not!”

The guilt hummed inside him, stronger. He nearly loosed his tongue— after all, the Warrior of Darkness was here among them now. The gaps in the scions’ defences would surely be closed firm with such a celebrated hero in the mix. It wasn’t the way it was when it all first started; they were not scattered, the world was not choked out entirely with light, and they were once again _together_. Not to mention that it was late into the night, and by the _Twelve_ , he was tired. So, _so_ tired. Of the hiding, the bending of his knee, the continuous sacrifice of his dignity that seemed to be more intense with every meeting. _Broken. Imperfect. Pathetic_. He squeezed his eyes shut at the recollection of his own voice.

But yet… was he truly hesitant because in spite of the humiliation, the dual pain of internal and external suffering, Lahabrea was a good fuck? Gods! How foolish! Thancred began to lean forward to rest his head in his hands, then made a small pained _‘gah—!’_ and abandoned the idea. Instead he looked to the ceiling, a poor man’s attempt at escaping Y’shtola’s scathing glare. With a look of uncertain resignation, he said: “Very well, Y’shtola. You’ve made your point. I will explain myself, but only if you understand that this will only heap further danger on your—”

“We’ve danced with danger our whole lives, Thancred. _All of us_. I am _not_ about to stop now, and neither are they.”

“Alright, alright.” Thancred inhaled a steadying breath. A final dragging of his heels. And finally, _finally_ , he made his confessional. The first real act of defiance that would not, and _could not_ be his last. A silent vow that he would not turn to compliance ever again. 

That there would never be another day when he was forced to drag himself off the floor and pick up the scattered pieces of his self left behind by the one who sought to dominate him utterly from the moment they had first met.


	2. Chapter 2

Il Mheg was a land of eerie stillness. A place frozen in time between fog and water and light, _miserable light_ — how he yearned for the dark, a reprieve that wasn’t purely artificial from shutting out the outside world, and though he thought it might get easier with time, it had been two full years and he still prayed for a time when he might open his eyes to find the stars twinkling down in all their dim, distant glory. 

At least there were some small justices in the world. He couldn’t stray far from Urianger’s abode without the threat of striking the fae folk’s childish ire, but he _could_ step outside, breathe, and brood without the _girl’s_ wide blue eyes at his neck like a noose. Thancred closed his eyes and inhaled. The girl who followed him like a spectre, whose every word grated at his ribs, clamped down upon him like a shackle. And yet, and yet! To abandon her would be to abandon his solemn duty, the _one_ irreplaceable responsibility he needed to fulfill within this Twelve-forsaken realm.

How the gods could be cruel.

But the books within Urianger’s home were more than productive ways to pass the time between their ventures, especially for a young mind in sore need of knowledge. Not to mention the Elezen himself was more than capable of guarding her for a spell. Thus Thancred found himself outside, back against the outside of Urianger’s humble little hut, arms across his chest, grey eyes distant in seething thought.

Distant— until the fog stirred across the road. Thancred stood upright, shoulders tense. The fae, perhaps? No, it didn’t feel right. Feather-light wings could cross the length of this land without the slightest disturbance, if they chose to make their presence tangible to the naked eye at all. His gaze narrowed, and he took a few slow, tentative steps forward. The grass bristled beneath his boots, a slow _tswitsh, tswitsh_ to accompany his otherwise silent stride. “Reveal yourself,” he barked, a command he fully expected to be ignored. The fae would merely laugh, and other foes were not like to abandon an attempt at stealth so easily. No, his voice, loud and powerful in the still air was intended for the keen ears of his fellow scion in the hopes that Urianger would hear him through the walls and know to raise his guard.

Eulmorian? Sin eater? Thancred couldn’t quite tell, and it didn’t sit right with him. No footsteps, no flapping of wings, no primitive utterings of a creature bound by instinct and little else. _Where are you?_ He asked himself, alert, hackles raised. _Who are you…?_

From the corner of his eye, the fog faltered. Thancred whipped around on his heel, and an arm flew to snatch the hilt of his blade. Gunblade yanked from its mount upon his back, the scion bared his steel against the grey mist. Lips pressed into a firm, fine line. Again, he called to both the emptiness and Urianger, “Your ploys are doing little to fool me. I will not say it again: reveal yourself!”

“How eager,” a deep coo from behind, directly in his ear, made grey eyes snap wide and bowels run cold. Thancred spun, sword no longer simply bared but swung with full force. That was not the voice of the fae. Blade cut through empty fog. Body fell into a wholly defensive stance, the fingers of his free hand tense and ready to snatch a cartridge from his belt.

The Eulmorians! It had to be them— but the voice was not one he recognized, not among the authorities he knew, and there was no way in the seven hells that a humble foot soldier was capable of such agility. Teeth bared, and a feral veil of protectiveness took hold of him with choking profundity. “You will not take her,” he snapped at the voice, “And that is _not_ a threat— that is certitude.”

“ _You_ do not have the power to stop me,” came a haughty response. 

That was all the justification Thancred needed. _Urianger! They’ve come!_ He yelled, or at the very least was his intent. But words died in his throat, restrained by force unknown. Silencing magicks? No, the Eulmorians hadn’t such capabilities. Confusion gripped him, but in spite of it, he had a single goal. Thancred turned to the door with the aim of sprinting inside to alert the others physically if not verbally, only to freeze at the sight of a figure directly between him and his goal. The recognition was immediate, if not perplexing. A plate of daunting red intensity that covered the man’s eyes, long robes of darkest black that stood with striking contrast against the pale of Il Mheg, lined with steel in all the wrong places. An Ascian, _here,_ in the First.

It was not a situation he ever wanted to find himself in, to say the least. Thancred swung with wild abandon, driven by an instinctual need to defend himself, but a hand rose to catch his blade before it could strike the Ascian’s neck, bringing it to an immediate halt with no resistance. The faux fangs of the Ascian’s mask offered immediate identification, and if his voice had not been utterly extinguished, Thancred would have gasped. He pulled back, eyes full with disbelief, then drawn into fine slits as he once more bared his teeth.

“Such impatience. I was not _finished_ , scion.”

The Ascian— Thancred dared not use the name, because it made no sense to call the figure before him by a dead man’s name— traipsed toward him. The masked _creature_ made no move to attack, but Thancred’s body backed away of its own accord. _You’re an illusion_ , he wanted to say, _I will not be brought low by the tricks of the fae._ The Ascian who bore striking resemblance to the shade in front of him had been dead and gone for a long time, and there was no returning from the utter annihilation of one’s aether. It was not possible.

Instead he reached for his belt to grab a small vial of liquid, popping the cork with his thumb, and went to ingest it to reverse the spell of silence within his throat when the Ascian waved his hand, shattering the vial before Thancred had the chance to bring it remotely close to his lips. He looked to his hand, then, driven by pure desperation to regain his voice, licked his gauntlet in a last-ditch attempt to seize the curative fluid spilled across his palm.

_Urianger!_ He tried to shout, but the few drops salvaged from his tongue were not enough to cancel out the magicks. Jaw fluttered voicelessly.

“Enough!” The Ascian hissed, and in an instant, appeared closer to Thancred with such jarring suddenness that his entire body froze. “My time is by _far_ too valuable to be wasted by the likes of _you_. I would then think you desire another _taste of my power_.”

The words were vague enough that Thancred did not immediately understand the Ascian’s meaning. But then a weakness gripped him, and gunblade tumbled unceremoniously from his hand. A faintness of the mind, wherein one instant he stood, and the next he was against the ground on all fours, struggling on his elbows to rise up again. He knew this sensation. A distinct feeling he had only encountered once in his life, but was enough to wrack his gut with cold fear. As though a creature, bulging and wet, had slithered its way into his mouth, up the back of his neck and into his skull. A disgusting chill that numbed his thoughts and spread a paralytic poison through his limbs.

All at once, he felt himself back in Thanalan all those years ago. At Lahabrea’s feet, writhing in desperation to expel a second will from dominating his mind. It was the same, _exactly the same_ , only this time he felt his sense of self fade like a wall demolished from weakened foundation. He was ebbing away too rapidly to put up a fight for longer than a few seconds. Then he felt himself collapse, a warm darkness enveloping his consciousness to put it into unwilling slumber.

Ascian possession truly was a tragedy. All it took was a single succumbing, and he could be worn like a glove. His last thought pleaded with the Twelve that he would not be used to harm his allies. _Do not harm her._ Thancred reached weakly for the hut that stood so tauntingly close, yet too far to fathom as his eyes fluttered shut. 

_Urianger, I implore you— keep Minfilia from harm— at any cost._

And then he was gone.

* * *

For the briefest instant, Thancred knew not where he was, or even _who he was._ The world felt novel, as though his aching form had been reborn anew from a most terribly cold womb. Fingers scraped against stone as they twitched to life. Wracked with a sickly heaviness, the scion slid, one arm drawn in toward himself to mount onto his elbow whilst a leg pushed back to find bracing purchase against the ground. He gripped the side of his head and felt the sharp throb of a migraine. Slowly, Thancred stirred. And as he did, he came to recall in scattered fragments the events outside of Urianger’s home. _Lahabrea_ , he thought, first dully, then with aching clarity. _Lahabrea!_

He had been possessed, but looking to his palm, Thancred flexed his fingers and determined that such was no longer the case. _Then… the Warrior of Light…?_ Had he been saved again? With expectant eyes, he looked up in the hopes of locking gazes with his dearest ally, only to furrow his brow in confusion at his surroundings, dank, hard and damp. _A cavern?_

Weak limbs worked to push himself upright. A mind still half-lucid felt around for his weapon, met with nothing at his back and nothing but grime and rock on the ground. Quiet voice called for the Warrior of Light. If he had been liberated from his Ascian prison, the Champion of Hydaelyn had to be nearby.

“No,” answered another voice, familiar, “ _they_ will not save you this time.”

Thancred’s lips came together with a hiss, and blearily he looked for the source of the noise, eyes settling eventually on a figure perched atop a formation of rock that extruded from the cavern wall. “Who—” he stifled a small pained grunt as the migraine pricked at the back of his skull, “—are you?”

“I will not dignify that question with an answer, _boy_. You are _fully aware_ with whom you have the privilege of speech.”

“ _No,_ ” Thancred replied, a mocking echo of the Ascian’s own words, “That _fiend_ has long since perished in the flames of his own conceit. _You_ are not _he_.”

“How very _arrogant_ of you to dictate mine own identity, scion.” The Ascian rose to his full height and then some, the tips of his boots lifting off the ground to hover with an almost bristling indignation. “And how _naive_ to think a servant of Zodiark would be destroyed with such laughable ease. That naïveté would have been your downfall… were it not so already.”

A sharp heat began to broil beneath the scion’s feet. The instincts of a seasoned warrior overwrote the agony of his aching head, and with a sudden awareness of the danger he was in, Thancred stumbled to his feet and rolled out of the way just as an upward jettison of flame devoured the spot where he had been seated. “ _Lahabrea_ is dead!” Thancred insisted once more, and once more sidestepped another blazing onslaught so close to his face that he felt the stinging heat slap him like a sharp hand against his cheeks.

“Miserable wretch!” The Ascian swiped his jagged claw through the air, and in a swirling pool of shadow evaporated from his perch to the space directly behind Thancred, the only tell-tale sign of his reappearance being the sharp inhale of breath that allowed the scion to twist and drop out of the way just as a hand snapped for his neck. “If you would so shroud yourself in denial, then _perhaps_ I will revoke my mercies and _burn the girl to ash_ in Zodiark’s name!”

“You will do no such thing!” Thancred snapped back. Without thinking, he reached within the confines of his coat and unclasped a small dagger from his belt, pitiful in comparison to his gunblade, but a weapon nonetheless capable of slitting the Ascian’s neck with all the force in Thancred’s arm behind it. Blade ghosted the Ascian’s throat, but the instant it began to kiss flesh, a sudden force pushed back against the scion, and as though he had been slammed in the gut by an incoming axe, jolted backward and slammed into the wall of the cavern. Winded, the dagger tumbled from his grasp and skittered across stone with a deafening clatter.

_Up,_ he commanded himself, but mental will alone was not enough to overturn the swelling of his migraine and newly born crack of pain that ripped up his spine as he struggled to his feet. The Ascian strode towards him, and though pain was an excellent deterrent from rising again, the glowing sigil that spread in front of the Ascian’s head proved even more effective. Thancred paused on one knee, then fell back onto his ass as he shrunk away from the Ascian— _Lahabrea’s_ true face.

“What mercies?” Thancred said at last, voice yet tinged with hate and disbelief. “What mercies could someone like _you_ possibly hope to offer? You take and you destroy— I am not fool enough to believe you willing to _give_!”

“I could steal you again in an instant, scion.” Lahabrea slowed his approach, clearly pleased to see the sight of his prey with his back against the wall— _literally_. “If I so chose, I could wear your flesh and twist a knife into the backs of your comrades before they had the opportunity to realize the deception. The betrayer, betrayed. The girl, annihilated by her own savior. And I would do so with the _greatest_ of pleasures.”

“Then why haven’t you?” Thancred snapped, feeling for the other dagger clasped to his belt.

“Because,” Lahabrea came to a halt in front of him, “It would be all too simple, and I have no shortage of time. And… hm.” He knelt, and though every tensed muscle in Thancred’s body dictated him to unsheathe his weapon and swipe again at the hand that reached out toward him, he sat perfectly still as claws brushed against the underside of his jaw, then took it in a vice grip. Thancred swallowed, thick and seething. “You are the sole vessel to escape me and _live_. Such _stubborn persistence_ warrants reward.”

Scentless, hot breath against his face. Thancred glowered, but said nothing. If Lahabrea wanted to use him as a puppet, there was painfully little he could do. Perhaps if this was an attempt at gloating, he would get over himself quicker if offered little reaction in response to his taunts. Still, his chest ached. Ached with a terrible tightness. Urianger would protect her, he told himself. Urianger would see through Lahabrea’s ruse. His grip on his sanity hinged entirely on those self-reassurances.

“I will _own you_ , scion. You will be mine— every _inch of you_ — and in exchange, I will spare your pitiful allies. They shall not see a mere inkling of my presence, and may yet live to see another dawn. But you _will_ come when I beckon. You _will_ give yourself over to my desire, or I will _take you unwillingly_ and steal the very life from their eyes with your own hand.”

Thancred’s fingers released the hilt of his dagger, falling back to his lap with numb miscomprehension. It sounded all the same to him. That either way, Lahabrea would hijack his body and do as he pleased regardless of whether he agreed or disagreed. Thus with balking quiet he replied, “I don’t believe I understand.”

“Then _what_ must I make clear?” Lahabrea’s opposite hand crept down, and through his breastplate he could feel the faintest pressure of fingertips snake against his chest, then abdomen, and while he suspected the hand would creep into his coat and steal away his second blade, it continued past his waistline and settled on his pelvis. Thancred gave a sharp inhale. “One way or another, this vessel will be mine. _One way_ —” Thancred’s vision blurred as his consciousness ebbed and he felt the Ascian’s soul slide inside him yet again, only for Lahabrea to withdraw from his brain and bring him back to reality. “—Or another,” he finished, seizing Thancred’s crotch with a firm hand. The scion threw a hand of his own downward in intervention, only for Lahabrea’s grip to clamp hard on both his dick and chin and remind him of just how vulnerable his genitalia stood with little more than the fabric of his pants to defend himself from Lahabrea’s razor claws. Thancred gasped in pain. “ _One way_ ,” Lahabrea repeated again, the words hanging firm in the air until Thancred pulled his hands back in submission, “ _Or another_.” The grip on his dick grew lax, but the scion’s bared teeth then parted with a gasp of another kind when Lahabrea began to knead his groin instead.

“Wh… _what_ are you doing?”

A magicked force beckoned Thancred’s wrists together in front of his chest. Fetters of shadow took root in the air, fastening firm around his gauntlets in a double column tie. His spine arched against the stone at his back, not out of pleasure but repulsion, a desperation to get away while also transfixed by bile fascination. Fingers worked at his crotch, rubbing slow, working out exactly where his dick sat in his pants. Not that it was hard to know when it began to rouse from the stimulation, masterful as it was.

“Do you understand _now_ , scion? The conditions of my most _generous_ offer?” Lahabrea’s mask was close. Too close for comfort, in fact, and Thancred wanted to lean away but the claws gripping his chin would not allow for movement. The Ascian’s mouth spread into a toothy smile, sly and sultry, and he came closer, _closer_ to Thancred’s face until fangs bit into the scion’s bottom lip to prise open his jaw. All the while he kneaded and kneaded Thancred’s groin. Kneading, _kneading_ , biting, kissing, until a churning warmth stirred within his victim. Thancred’s breath grew sputtered, and a tongue wrenched its way into his mouth to explore the inside of his body in a way wholly separate from possession. He was hardening, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it aside from another attempt to intervene with his bound wrists, only to have that liberty stripped away when the same force that bound them together forced them upward. At the very least it was a reprieve from the choking kisses when Lahabrea pulled back just long enough to allow Thancred’s tied arms to rise above his head before resuming the onslaught.

The teasing hand felt magnificent through his pants, but he wanted for direct contact— a desire that made him tense further with alarm when the sinful thought crossed his mind. Wrists thrashed freely. Bindings scraped against his gauntlets, and if he had the clarity of mind, he would have been grateful that the ties hadn’t been directly against his skin.

A thin trail of saliva connected their lips when Lahabrea pulled back again, though he continued to work Thancred’s groin, spurred on by the twitching of the scion’s hips, the electric sense of forced pleasure plain in his unconscious movements. “You resist when the lives of all you hold dear hang in the balance. Is this the answer you’ve chosen, scion? I will take _pleasure_ in their damnation.”

“I— don’t—” It became difficult to find words between the whirlwind of emotions in his throat and the budding growth of erotic warmth that spread freely down his thighs and up his rib cage. ‘ _My steel will defend them from the likes of you’_ had been the basis of his thought, and Lahabrea seemed to infer it when he laughed a callous laugh and stopped his kneading, leaving Thancred’s crotch sore and longing.

“How easily I stole you away, and how I have you here within my grasp. Do not deceive yourself with the illusion that you have the power to protect them.”

“They will—” _Cut you down_ , he started, but Lahabrea did not give him the chance to finish.

“The scions are far weaker than they believe themselves to be. Without your ‘Warrior of Light’, there is nothing to stand in my path that will not be cast aside in an instant. Regardless of whether I don your feeble flesh,” Lahabrea’s hand came to settle on Thancred’s thigh, “The flame of my fury will raze them, and it will be because you have denied my kindness.” Claws bit into his skin, and Thancred hissed at the sudden burn of injury. Slowly, Lahabrea raked them down toward his knee. Blood blossomed freely from the tears in his pants, the leathery fabric soaking in what little it could manage. Thancred threw his head back against the rock, determined to keep the Ascian from wrenching out a scream. That did not seem to be Lahabrea’s goal, but it didn’t make it any easier to endure when he continued, “I will start with the two here, of course. They will try to defend themselves, but their magicks will bleed dry and mine will endure. And the girl… so young. She will stand no chance.”

“No,” Thancred hissed, “you underestimate them.” He could not fully convince himself of the truth in his claim. They were stronger than he, but the Ascian trumped them all by far. Wicked magicks, underhanded methods, and wiles beyond imagination.

“You will fail this Minfilia precisely how you failed the last,” Lahabrea cooed. 

Half-conviction became whole in an instant. Thancred’s eyes snapped open, face contorting with a sudden unbridled rage. “Do _not_ speak her name! You _taint_ her memory with your _foul tongue, Ascian_!”

Lahabrea’s smirk held fast, and with attitude cusping on casual, began to massage Thancred’s throbbing groin once more. The scion choked on a groan. “Protective,” Lahabrea murmured in his ear, “Yet too proud to relinquish himself unto me for the lives of so many others. It would amuse me were it not so irritating.”

Teeth gnashed in rage. Thancred squeezed his eyes shut and thought of Minfilia— _his Minfilia_ , and not her imperfect copy— and his heart twisted in his chest. _Gods, Minfilia. Gods! What do I do? I would rather die than suffer you to see this wretched sight! I would rather die than watch you suffer, and that would be the end of it!_

He was fully hard now. Lahabrea had seen to that. Again, Thancred threw his head back and stifled a whine. “…fine! Is this all you require to fulfill this agreement? Then fine! I will give you my body so long as it remains under my control! So long as you keep your— nnghh— _Filth_ away from the others!”

“A wise choice,” Lahabrea replied, and with cool indifference, unclasped Thancred’s pants. A burning heat tore across his cheeks, a painful mixture of humiliation and arousal. The cold steel of Lahabrea’s claws against his dick made him shift from the sensitivity and dread of having something so sharp so close to a delicate part of his body. Careful not to tear him open, however, Lahabrea stroked his member. Thancred tried so dearly to restrain himself, yet with each rub made it more and more difficult not to squirm. His chest spasmed with unrestrained, ragged breath. And the arousal, already so powerful, only grew stronger when he felt Lahabrea’s own breath against his neck, hot and sticky. Tongue ran up the length of his tattoo. It was not a kiss, but a taste— of sweat? Blood? He didn’t know, and as pressure began to build in his dick, stopped caring. Back arched and pelvis gravitated towards Lahabrea’s touch which intensified alongside Thancred’s breathing, only for the rubbing to crawl to a teasing, lazy halt. Bound hands curled into fists.

“I thought myself past such base desires,” Lahabrea panted in his ear, “but your pathetic longing has awoken my libido, Thancred. Your face flushes with frustration. Your body trembles to feel my touch.” As though to prove a point, the back of his knuckle brushed against the scion's unmarred leg, indeed wresting an involuntary shiver. “You would press yourself into me in desperation for release. Desperate for touch.” Slow, slow strokes paced up and down the length of his shaft. Precum oozed from his member. “To stare such a flawed beast in the face is a glorious reminder of my own perfection.”

“You will not touch them,” Thancred’s voice, reduced to a whisper, searched for confirmation.

“No,” Lahabrea agreed, and Thancred’s groin twitched at the rising build of orgasmic heat in his cock, “but I will touch _you_.”

He spurted, whining at his prolonged climb. So terribly slow, the touch that controlled him. A finger that swirled around his tip, then moved to massage the base of his shaft. Teasing, but not for Thancred’s own pleasure. No, it was for the sake of watching him tremble, bound hands tightening harder and harder in anticipation, until finally Lahabrea began to pump with full force again. With his anchored wrists as support, Thancred arched himself a little higher, the swelling heat within his member at last pooling in the tip. With quickened moans he came, arriving at complete release, squirting warm cum onto Lahabrea’s hand and himself. Entire body shivered with uncontrollable pleasure, fingers loosening in their cuffs, and he wished that his body would remain in orgasmic euphoria for just a moment longer, but the long climb ended with a sharp descent. Thancred trembled against the rocks, panting heavily, grey eyes closed firm with arms still hung above his head.

With jaw agape, it was all too easy for a hand to find its way inside. Thancred opened his eyes with a start to find Lahabrea’s fingers probing his mouth— fingers that were, naturally, slick with his own cum. Thancred gagged, but the involuntary convulsion of his jaw made the Ascian’s steel claws cut against his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Any movement would turn the gentle exploration of his mouth into painful internal injury. Heavy breath turned from mouth to nostrils, and he tried his damndest to remain perfectly still until Lahabrea grew bored with his tongue and the edges of his teeth.

“I am finished with you,” the Ascian said at last, “For now.” His hand left Thancred’s mouth, leaving the scion to sputter and attempt to spit out the grotesque mixture of his cum, blood and saliva. Lahabrea laughed, long and low, then reached out to brush away some of the drool that hung from Thancred’s lips. “Such a pitiful sight,” Lahabrea remarked. He stood, and the magicked cords around Thancred’s wrists dissolved into a wisp of shadow.

The instant movement returned to his arms, Thancred moved to wipe his face— properly. He snatched a potion from his belt to both seal up the jagged claw marks on his thigh and rinse his mouth, grey eyes affixed to Lahabrea with a sullen glower. Gaze unmoving from the enemy, Thancred tossed the empty vial aside, wiped his face again for good measure, and moved to tuck his cock away in his pants. To hide his indignity best he could.

“If I beckon, you will come.” Lahabrea instructed yet again, as though Thancred had already forgotten their wretched bargain.

“And where shall I go?” He hissed in response.

“You will know when the time comes,” was the Ascian’s cryptic answer to a perfectly genuine question. A shadowed maw opened at Lahabrea’s back, though he lingered to leer down at Thancred before he turned and allowed the shadow to swallow him whole. Then the portal collapsed, and the scion was left alone.

Alone, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. Thancred laid back against the rocks with sudden fatigue and closed his eyes. What sort of desperate man would ever make such a foul agreement with the enemy? _You would_ , he thought to himself, an obvious answer to an obvious question.

If sword and shield were not sufficient to ward off their foes, then perhaps it was only his due responsibility that he offer himself in any way he could toward that end. One way or another— his allies were safe from a most dangerous threat.

One way or another. That was all that mattered.

* * *

Y’shtola did not move for the longest time. Halfway through his sheepish explanations, she had crossed her arms and turned her back, leaving Thancred to guess what the look on her face might be. She hung her head. He imagined her eyes closed over, but there was no predicting her emotions. To think she would be struck silent by his tale when he had expressly left out as much as he could; not to conceal the truth, but rather out of embarrassment to admit just how far he had fallen.

“Y’shtola?” He prompted, stirring to sit upright. Reformed, fresh skin tingled with the sudden motion, but that was far preferable to the alternative. “I’ve nothing left to say.”

“Be quiet, Thancred.” Y’shtola said, her first words since he had started his tale. He expected her to follow up the command, which he followed willingly and not out of fear, but she lapsed back into her uncomfortable silence. The gunbreaker watched her uneasily as he once again reached for a small cloth in a pail of pinkish water on the table, wrung it out, and gently started to scrub away more of the blood, both dried and wet, that clung to his body.

He had nearly cleaned off the entirety of one arm when at last, Y’shtola stirred again. She raised her head but still kept her back turned. “I cannot begin to express my hurt,” she said, “that after all these years, you never once thought to turn to us for aid. That you believed it preferable to bear this burden alone, that we might be spared an additional inch of danger in a world already rife with bloodshed.”

“Y’shtola…” Thancred began, but Y’shtola held up a hand.

“Pray fathom for a moment, Thancred, what it would be like if the situation were reversed. What if I— Urianger— the Warrior of Darkness— what if _any one of us_ had chosen to bend to the twisted whims of the Ascians for your sake? Rather than trust in the strength of our allies, that we opted to skulk in the shadows and maintain a ruse, suffering all the while irreversible wounds? Would it not rend your heart?”

“I could not take the risk, Y’shtola,” Thancred began again, firm in that conviction if nothing else. He set the cloth aside and stood. Chair scraped against stone floor. Y’shtola turned on her heel, arms still clenched across her chest, eyes clamped shut with a bridge of troubled wrinkles between them.

“Mayhap not then, but after? When you were among your allies, will your own, more than capable of alerting us that we might repel the Ascian together? At the very least, why not when the Warrior of Darkness returned to us? I cannot comprehend your rationale, Thancred. I cannot! How long would you have maintained this ‘bargain’ had I not uncovered it?”

“I… I cannot say with certainty,” Thancred admitted.

“By the Twelve,” she murmured with the firm shake of her head. “How much more could you have endured? What if the Ascian had chosen to inflict mortal injury upon you? When he tired of his games, what then? Would you lay down and accept possession, and have all your efforts be for naught?”

Her interrogation ached like the raw nerves beneath his phantom wounds. Thancred hung his head. “I don’t know, Y’shtola. Is that the answer you seek?”

“I seek an ally— a _friend_ — who will speak the truth and not lies!” A stormy rage crept back into her tone, and Y’shtola opened her eyes to glare him down. Heels scraped against the floor in angered stride, and she approached until she stood directly in front of him, clouded gaze so intense Thancred felt he could not look away. “Gods, Thancred,” she whispered, voice suddenly stripped bare, “I have never felt more powerless in my life. You— you infuriate me.”

At such close proximity, Thancred could see the subtle shifting in her expression. A brow that couldn’t quite decide whether to be enraged or miserable. The slight tremble of her jaw. The quiet shiver of shaking breath.

“An apology wouldn’t quite be sufficient this time,” he murmured back. “Perhaps I can offer my thanks for your aid, instead.”

“What _aid_ , Thancred?” Y’shtola replied, “That I mended your body rather than watch you bleed out? If you must thank me for that, then I make for a poor ally, indeed.”

“What else am I to say?” Thancred asked, his question defensive but genuine.

“There is nothing _to be_ said.” She fell silent, looking down, no doubt wondering what else was being hidden from her. The woman had a point, as loath he was to admit it. If the others had thought him so weak that they needed to submit to such torture to preserve him, it would ruin him. Weakness plagued him, yes, but to proven belittled in the eyes of his comrades…

Thancred placed a hand on her shoulder, hesitant at first, but Y’shtola did not reject it. “I am sorry. Truly, I am.” His other hand found her opposite shoulder, and he leaned in ever so slightly, only to ask, “May I?”

She nodded, and Thancred took her a hug, awkward and uncomfortable. Her heart hammered against his chest, racing with an emotion he couldn’t place. Y’shtola leaned her brow against his sternum and murmured: “Trust is all I ever asked for, Thancred. If we cannot place our hopes in one another, then we are unfit to call ourselves Scions of the Seventh Dawn. I would have thought _you_ of all people would know this…”

Suddenly, he was able to place the driving force of her beating heart. Hurt. Betrayal. Aimless rage and helplessness. Yes, he knew those feelings well. “I think… I am not entirely sure of who I am anymore, Y’shtola. Not the man I once was,” he said, only to add to himself, _if ever I was a man worth aspiring to be to begin with._

“Do not,” Y’shtola said, placing a curled fist against his chest, the breath of her voice suddenly strong against his tender flesh, “Expect me to indulge in your self-pity. You know full well that we are here to help— but we cannot help a man who will not help himself.”

Thancred had no response. Y’shtola inhaled through her nostrils. Her hand slid from his chest to wrap around his back, finally returning the hug, stiff and unintimate as it was. Finally, she spoke again. “No more lies, Thancred. No more secrets.”

_I will do my damndest,_ he wanted to say, but that would not suffice for Y’shtola. Instead he replied, “Very well,” and though the sudden rigidity that overtook the Miqo’te suggested she saw right through his answer, she said nothing toward that end. Eventually, she pulled away from the hug and placed her hands on her hips, gaze turned toward the floor in pensive thought.

“The others must needs be made aware of this,” Y’shtola said, “though I am aware of the sensitivity of the matter. I will not force you to indulge the details. But I will not allow them to remain ignorant to the looming threat of further Ascian interference. I’m sorry, Thancred.”

“No, ’tis reasonable. A most unappealing future conversation, but reasonable.”

Y’shtola nodded, though she searched his face for any sign of insincerity. Then, with heavy sigh, moved past him to grab the bloodied pot of water and dispose of it. On her way to the door, she stopped and looked back. “Rest, Thancred. You look exhausted. More so than usual. If it should offer you peace… you may rest in my quarters, that I be in immediate proximity.”

“I believe I will accept that offer, Y’shtola. It will do me well to know that someone else is watching my back for once.”

“Mm,” she hummed, uncertain, but ultimately continued on her way, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

He wondered if she knew that there was no way in the seven hells that he would be getting a wink of rest tonight. Such was the unfortunate reality of having a mind locked in perpetual tumult.


	3. Chapter 3

Thancred had wholly anticipated the retribution to be swift and relentless. Yet the hours of a long and languished night dragged into day— not that anyone would know it from the skies above Rak’tika, of course— and day relented into night, night back unto day, with nary a whiff of the Ascian. There was work to be done, but to have that weight looming above his head as though Lahabrea still had his wretched claws wrapped around his neck was insufferable. And all the while, they had yet to find a way into the deeper reaches of the forest. Time was of the essence, and it was working against them.

Thus he forced himself to press onward, accompanying the Warrior of Darkness in their assigned tasks at times, and hunting sin eaters at others. Waiting, always waiting, for his forearm to burn; sometimes to the point where he would catch himself rubbing absentmindedly at his gauntlet. A noticeable tic, he realized, when Y’shtola pulled him to the side and demanded he remove his glove and roll back his sleeve to ensure that he wasn’t hiding anything from her. But there was nothing. No etchings, no blood, no blemishes aside from the scars that came naturally with a life of constant combat.

He allowed himself the reprieve of rest in Y’shtola’s quarters that first night, but after, it simply wouldn’t do to continue to invade her privacy. That was what he told himself, at least, but truth be told Thancred wasn’t entirely positive whether he preferred the discomfort of taking a bed offered of pity or laying alone in his quarters, arms draped across his face with racing thoughts that leered into uncomfortable territory far too often for his liking.

Dread held firm, hollow and vast in his stomach. Such anxieties were normal, he reckoned, after double-crossing a creature as depraved as Lahabrea. But worse still were the moments Thancred found himself inhaling shivered breaths, recalling the touch of those skilled, clawed hands. Not a shiver of cold, but _warmth_. An uncomfortable warmth that, in moments of solitude, left Thancred wanting.

_Don’t be absurd,_ the scion scolded himself, repeating over and over the atrocities he had suffered at every meeting. Ironically, any reminder of the degradation seemed more effective at stoking the flames that flickered within him rather than act as an extinguisher. And one night, though he gave himself firm instructions— _turn your thoughts elsewhere. I’ll not allow that monstrosity to be the subject of any fantasy—_ he slid a hand down his chest, toward his crotch in full disobedience of his own precaution. Slow and hesitant. He pressed his left forearm to his lips and closed his eyes almost as though to better recall the itch of the summoning scratches.

Fingers slipped past his loosened waistband. White brows came together, wrinkling the bridge of his nose. _Don’t do this. Do not permit him to control you when he isn’t even here._ Protests fell on deaf ears, however, as they always did in Lahabrea’s presence. Thancred took himself in hand. At first his motions were weighed with a heavy disgust, mind awry with a million reasons to stop or at least attempt to think of someone, _something_ else. But there was a snake in his mind: the traitorous memory of rough kisses against his neck and shoulders, the wet heat of breath in his ear, the rough sway of his body as another rocked inside of him. His cock stirred faster the more he thought, and before long, the scion could barely fathom any rationale above the echo of Lahabrea’s razor-edged tongue. Thancred played with himself, a seething hatred locked within his ribs all the while. Quiet huffs escaped him as he hardened fully, quite unaccustomed to the sensation of a hand that never rolled to a teasing halt. Quite unaccustomed to the idea of freedom in general, but there was something pleasant about knowing that his build would not come to a premature end. That it would grow, and grow, and grow freely until he could bear it no more.

Until hips rocked into his own hand, back lifting up against the bed in a slight arch. Lips wrenched open to utter a stifled gasp. Abdomen radiated with heated pleasure, and to better muffle his voice, Thancred moved to press his hand directly over his mouth rather than rely on his forearm. He could feel the flush of his face; warm across his cheeks, the tips of his ears, the nape of his neck. Memories of a thousand bruises, some yellowed, some a deep violet, others black and blue with busted blood vessels. A thousand lacerations, another thousand bite marks. Pain irreversibly intertwined with forced delectation.

_Have you no self-restraint?_ He asked himself, clarity amidst the fractured daydreams, but he needed no answer aside from the reckless abandon which he rubbed himself. No one knew his body better than he— the most sensitive spots that made his gut flutter with delight— or so he thought. It was hard to tell whether he truly knew himself best anymore, after having every inch of his person thoroughly studied and invaded. Regardless, he savoured his own prowess, sharp as ever despite having little opportunity to use his hands during their sordid affairs.

The first time in years that he indulged in pleasure on his own, without Lahabrea’s shadow at his heels. It was in the midst of this realization that he remembered an exchange of their’s and tensed, but ultimately chose to continue masturbating in spite of the jarring memory. A faded command, to be most certain. One utterly forgotten with time, but suddenly of great relevance: _“Do not think for an instant to indulge yourself, scion. Such liberty is unbefitting a beast. I am the one who dictates your release— no other. And you are no exception. There will be no gratification save by my hand. Lest you forget, you are mine.”_

Thancred’s lips curved into the slightest of roguish smiles. He gasped again at a sudden surge in his member. The guilt of lavishing himself to the thought of Lahabrea vanished utterly for an instant as he relished in his victory. Small and private, but victory nonetheless. With panting breaths he felt the warmth inside him begin to coagulate. _So I am your’s, Lahabrea? Perhaps I was, but no longer._

There was nothing Lahabrea could do to hinder the tremble of his abdomen and the rise of his climax. Muffled by his palm, he moaned, and with it came an orgasm that radiated through his stomach and thighs. Thancred came, back still hung in an arch, and again allowed himself a quiet, fulfilled groan before his body settled against the bed, chest quick with rapid breath. Gods— it felt good. He’d forgotten the simplistic joy of straightforward sex. No begging, no whining, body wracked with a pleasant fatigue rather than the raw exhaustion of being pushed past his limits. The hand he came in dangled off the side of the bed as he ran his other palm across his shoulders and chest. No blood, and such little mess compared to what he’d grown used to.

He would need to clean himself up before he tried to sleep properly, but that could wait a little longer. Grey eyes gazed aimlessly at the ceiling. Despite the knowledge that sooner or later he would inevitably cross paths with the Ascian again, Thancred could not help but simmer in his own post-orgasmic satisfaction. Pulsing groin, lungs that slowly steadied. A palm moist with his own ragged breath, the other slick with cum. At least one could be easily wiped on the bed. The other— not so much.

With that in mind, he eventually stirred to cross the room and clean himself off with a small washbasin across from the bed, filled almost to the brim with stagnant water. With cloth in hand, he wiped himself down. Then he readjusted his pants, turned, and prepared to flop down on the bed once more when an abrupt ache tore up the inside of his forearm.

Calm satisfaction disappeared within an instant, and Thancred watched with a cold horror, face flinching at the burn, as an image began to carve itself into his flesh. Skin tore open with aggressive scratches and ran freely with thin trails of blood. Thancred fumbled for his armor, his weapon, but eyes refused to look away from the scene that only grew increasingly recognizable with further detail. A small room. Unfurnished aside from a few bare essentials. And most tauntingly of all, a sword propped against the wall that mirrored the exact location of Thancred’s own gunblade. 

Grey eyes narrowed. The bastard! Watching, undoubtedly waiting for the most opportune moment to strike! Thancred snatched his blade and bared it upon his shoulder, facing his back to the wall to get a clear visual on the entirety of the room. “Come to join in on the fun, have we?” He hissed beneath his breath, all too eager to provoke any Ascians that might lie in wait. Every muscle in his body seized for combat. But a minute passed, then another. The room was still. Blood trickled down his arm, drops gathering at his elbow to drip lazily onto his pants, though the ache of active scratching had subsided. _Gotten cold feet, Lahabrea? Your prey is here and ready._

Nothing. Nothing, and then the unexpected stirring of the door. One instant he stood at the back wall, and in the next found his sword clashing against a familiar wooden staff held in horizontal defence. He thanked the Twelve for Y’shtola’s superb instincts, then withdrew his blade and took a step back. “Quite a timely entrance,” he murmured, before the absurdity of baring his steel whilst only half-dressed and bleeding struck him, and he exhaled deeply, looking away with a sheepish flush.

Y’shtola peered over his shoulder, then promptly extended her hand with hardened gaze. “Your arm,” she demanded, and Thancred had no choice but to pass his sword to his other hand and give her the requested limb. Feather-light fingers traced the lines of his wounds. Y’shtola frowned. “A bluff, surely.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Thancred replied. “The Ascians have paid us visits in our territory before, no?” That wretched Emet-Selch, for instance. All too eager to shove his nose in their business. At least he seemed to be benign— for now.

Hands passed over the wound one more time to drink in the full picture. Then the soothing white glow of healing magicks emanated from Y’shtola’s palm, and the wound sealed as quickly as it had appeared. She released his arm. “Perhaps it would be prudent for you to share a room.”

“I’ll not be made to cower, Y’shtola. The bastard will find an opening regardless of my company. All it takes is an instant.”

“An instant?” Y’shtola quirked a brow. “A shame, then, that your body requires several hours of slumber to function. I take it you are prepared to forgo all rest until Lahabrea has been confronted?”

“…I don’t need your quips,” Thancred replied, eyes narrowed.

“And none of us need an ally too exhausted to stand because he could not fathom the thought of relinquishing his privacy.”

“It isn’t—” _a matter of privacy_ , he wanted to say, but there wasn’t a point to arguing. With a shrug, he sighed and said, “If I must. I take it you’ll want me to stay with you, then?”

“There is a spare bed in _Urianger’s_ quarters, actually.” She enjoyed correcting him a little _too_ much. A subtle flicker of smug amusement barely noticeable in her soft frown. “He and I are equally apprised of the situation, are we not? Not to mention it is better situated betwixt _all_ our accommodations, should a true emergency arise.”

“Then I shall inform him at once,” Thancred said. “as for you, there is work on that tablet of your’s to be done, is there not?”

“You would be correct. I trust I will be able to proceed with my study _without_ choking on the scent of blood this time?”

“I’m afraid that isn’t my call. Believe it or not, I’m not the one mutilating my own arm.”

The faint, unenthused light in Y’shtola’s eyes sparked into a sudden frustration. He half expected her to scold him, but to his surprise she said nothing but a sharp, “At least make an effort to sleep tonight, Thancred.”

She gave him no opportunity to further the conversation. Y’shtola turned on her heel and left through an open door she made no effort to close, tail flicking indignantly behind her. Thancred leaned back against the wall, and with tired hand, ran his fingers across his cheek and into his hair.

Lahabrea’s games had only just begun, and he was already jumping at shadows.

* * *

All it took was an instant. Several nights after changing bedchambers, several nights of restless slumber. Urianger had words, as he always did, but their conversations were but a fleeting comfort in the grand scheme of things. Still no progress on the tablet. Eulmorians at their doorstep. Tensions high in Slitherborough with all the additional threats right outside the gates. And the girl— _damn_ the girl and her identity that belonged rightfully to _his_ Minfilia. Before Y’shtola had cast open accusation upon him, Thancred could occasionally look past those bright blue eyes and force himself to offer some semblance of affection. _This isn’t her fault_ , came that tickle of rationality before it drowned in a sea of rampant rage. Now it infuriated him all the more that he was to be demonized for his conflicting emotions toward the girl when they knew— _all of them knew—_ how he would give _anything_ to see his Minfilia one more time. Five years with the girl meant nothing in comparison to a youth at the antecedent’s side, desperate and floundering to lend her his support, completely unaware of the tragedy that would cut her free life short and prevent him from ever truly repenting for his sins. Within that girl was his second chance, and despite the perversity of his desire to see her snuffed out if only one Minfilia could truly exist, Thancred prayed to the Twelve that this would all end in his favor.

_She’s just a girl_ , the rationality protested, and yet…

And yet, a movement from across the room stirred him from the storm of his own thoughts. Thancred shifted slightly to cast a backward glance at Urianger, and watched as his fellow scion silently drifted toward the door. Likely off to go relieve himself or get a breath of fresh air. Thancred thought nothing of it, and returned to lie on his side. A small mercy that his mind had seemed to have enough brooding for one night after that brief disturbance, and now felt coldly numb. Numb was good, though, when sleep was so far off-hand.

Grey eyes watched the wall with vacant disinterest until his eyelids grew heavy. They slid shut, and he drifted into a threadbare sleep. A gentle oblivion. Closer and closer he edged to unconsciousness, until without warning, his eyes snapped back open. Thancred laid still. Gut churned with the sudden realization that he was not alone. The door had yet to stir. Urianger had not yet returned, but he was not alone.

Like a snake in the grass, he snapped. Whipping around to grab the gunblade mounted beside his bed, thrusting it at full force toward the silhouette that stood a few feet from his bed with a feral cry. “You—!” Cloaked form collapsed into shadow, but Thancred knew these tricks far more intimately than he ever cared to know. Again he spun, but this time bared his blade in front of him to shield a swipe of black magic so intense that it pushed him back a little on his feet. Lahabrea maintained an eerie silence as he caught Thancred’s counterattack and unleashed a petty jolt of flame from his palm. A lash of heat that the scion barely ducked to avoid, given the close quartered nature of a small, cavernous bedroom.

The gunblade no longer felt awkward in his hands. It was an extension of his arm, sharpened by so many years of use and growing familiarity. Not to mention his heart, knotted with a repressed hatred of such vile intensity that he nearly snarled as he brought his blade down, again and again in an attempt to find a weak point in the Ascian’s defences. So many years of grovelling. Y’shtola had stirred something within him that he thought long lost to time: an unrelenting pride that would no longer compromise to the enemy. “Next time—” he spat, “ _Don’t reveal your presence beforehand with your petty games!”_

“ _Enough._ ” Lahabrea’s voice dripped with an irate poison. With a forceful gesture of his arm, a magicked force slammed into Thancred’s chest. He steeled himself, but blade could only do so much to absorb the sheer power behind the spell, and he stumbled back. But it was a stumble where he would have once been swept off his feet entirely, and the scion caught himself against the wall with his off-hand.

“Bit difficult to manipulate a puppet without strings, isn’t it?” A taunt borne of raw fury as Thancred swung his weight forward, only to remember his painful susceptibility to possession. If Lahabrea chose to seize his body, it would all be over. With that in mind, he swiped, pulling the trigger on the cartridge pre-loaded into the weapon. Magicked energy tore up the steel of the blade and into the impenetrable barrier that encapsulated Lahabrea’s form. Intense power that rattled the very foundation of the Ascian’s defences and pushed him back until the back of his robe met the base of the bed. A perfect opening for a second strike.

Or at least, it should have been. “I said _enough_!” Lahabrea’s hiss cusped on a yell. Shoulders pulled back, claws flexed, and a horrid pulse of shadowed magick lashed through the room. It was a blow that struck Thancred’s entire body, loosening his grip on his blade, and sent him flying back into the wall as though a primal had plowed into his shoulders.

Distantly, _distantly,_ he heard Urianger’s muffled voice from outside: “The seal holds fast!”

“Stand back!” Y’shtola’s commandeering response. The door shuddered with a jolt, but would not yield. “Find the others!”

If Lahabrea paid them any mind, it was only as distant as Thancred’s own acknowledgement of their presence. Masked gaze affixed to his prey, the Ascian raised his arm once more, and the shadows congregated to form a monstrous mirror image of his limb, a construct of seething magick that clasped firm around the scion’s neck to pin him back against the wall. A near-choking pressure dragged him upward until the soles of his boots barely skirted the ground. It was a stubborn refusal to be subdued here and now of all places that drove the upward thrust of Thancred’s blade into the magicked limb. He pulled the trigger in spite of the empty cartridge, but it was enough— just barely enough— to disperse the shadows and tumble down onto the full flat of his feet.

The door rattled on its hinges. Thancred lunged forward again, this time his blade catching on Lahabrea’s palm and not his shielding spells. It should have been child’s play to cut through flesh and wreak true harm upon the Ascian’s body, but the hand that held his weapon pushed back as though made of solid stone. Thancred grunted with exertion, and pushed harder. Shoulders fully tense with effort tried to hold his ground, but he could feel himself slipping. First by an inch, then the stone floor ground beneath his heel until his back pressed up against the wall once more. “You’ve— made a mistake— coming here!” Thancred snapped between grit teeth.

“You forget your place,” Lahabrea hissed back, looming closer, pushing blade back until it was all that stood between their faces, “And believe an act of resistance is all it takes to liberate you from our pact. Oh, but how you are _wrong_ , scion. No matter how hard you struggle… no matter how long you resist… you cannot free yourself from me, Thancred. I will _see_ to—”

With a thunderous clatter, the door flew back into the room and collided with Lahabrea, struck off-guard by the sudden projectile. Thancred’s seething grey eyes turned briefly to the source, and never in his life was he more glad to see Y’shtola with staff in hand, her entire being aglow with magicks of her own. “To the pits of the seventh hell with you, fiend!”

Lahabrea shrugged the door aside after a moment as though it were light as the air itself, lips twisted into an irritable scowl. _Feeling threatened now?_ Thancred reared his blade and threw himself back at the enemy, the advantage of surprise too tempting not to press.

What came next happened in a veritable blur.

The empty eyes of Lahabrea’s fanged mask turned to look at him. His form collapsed into darkness, but to Thancred’s surprise, the gate remained in Lahabrea’s wake. Heels dug into the floor and he dragged his forward momentum to a stop before the shadowed portal, only for a sudden grip on his ankle to pull back from within the abyss. Sword-bearing hand clung to his gunblade for dear life, the other searching for support. Thancred attempted to jerk his leg free from the inky black tendril that had latched onto him, but it held fast, continuing to pull back into the shadows— fully intending to take Thancred along with it.

He flipped over onto his back in an attempt to cleave himself free, but another sudden tug yanked him fully into the gate. Grey eyes glanced back just in time to watch Y’shtola fling herself towards him, and then he was gone.

No, _they_ were gone, together. Before the scion had a chance to take in his surroundings, he heard Y’shtola snarl: “Damn you!” A brilliant flash of light surged towards him— or rather, Lahabrea beside him— and Thancred scrambled to his feet to dodge the spell. But the Ascian’s shielding magicks stood renewed, and he shrugged off Y’shtola’s attack with the cursory wave of his hand. A horrid heat festered suddenly in the air, and with the disorientation of having been whisked away to destinations unknown, Thancred couldn’t manage to throw himself between Lahabrea’s counter and Y’shtola before a horizontal blade of flame lashed into her gut and threw her clean into the air. She was a warrior, not a defender, and she was not built to take the blow. Body slammed into darkened stone wall, and she fell lifelessly unto the floor.

“ _Y’shtola_!” Thancred cried, and his priority shifted in an instant. Lahabrea meant nothing, and all that mattered was to position himself between his vulnerable ally and the enemy. Legs could only carry him so fast, however, when Lahabrea needed only to will himself from one place to the next. The Ascian reappeared at her side, hand engulfed in flame pointed at her unconscious form, and Thancred froze dead in his tracks. Lahabrea’s look of mild anger had subsided, leaving behind the slightest ghost of a smile and a most relaxed composure.

“Shall you continue to resist?” Lukewarm tone; the life in his hands meant nothing to him, and both of them fully understood it.

Fingers clung stubbornly to his blade. To surrender now— Gods! It killed him! An electric rage shot through his bones and into firmly clenched teeth, lip curled back in disgust. Despite his iron grip, however, his body refused to move an inch. No movements, sudden or otherwise. He could not risk Y’shtola. “You’ll kill her, regardless,” he replied, voice low.

“Yield to your rightful master, _scion_ , lest you hasten her demise.”

Maybe she would come to her senses with a bit of time. That was all she needed. A bit of time, and his choices were slim. It would be certain death if he acted now, but surrender would hardly guarantee her survival. Thancred weighed his options, mind dizzy with possible outcomes.

“ _Now_ ,” Lahabrea commanded, and to punctuate his order, the flames at his fingertips flared with an ugly intensity that nearly touched Y’shtola’s body. There was only one viable option. Blade slipped from his shoulder, then limp fingers, and clattered to the ground at his side. Cast aside and abandoned. Thancred prayed with frenzied fervor that Lahabrea would not incinerate her on the spot and somehow, _somehow_ , the flames died in Lahabrea’s palm that he might turn fully to his favored prey instead. He laughed, vile but most pleased in himself. “On your knees.”

As long as Lahabrea’s undivided attention remained on him, he would do whatever he needed to keep it that way. Still, he closed his eyes and scowled as he kneeled. Gods, what a wretched creature! So eager to revel in destruction, in his own smug pride. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but still, Thancred inhaled sharply as shadowed fetters snaked around his thighs and shin to bind them together. Though he didn’t fold his arms behind his back this time, the ropes gripped his wrists, thoroughly lacing his limbs, and pulled them in a downward point behind his neck to leave both chest and back fully exposed.

_I hope you choke on your own blood, and that I will be there to see it._ Threats of the most violent caliber that he dared not vocalize, especially as footsteps drew closer. Breath sharp, quickened, then stopped entirely when he felt those vile claws brush against his cheek. _You don’t deserve the mercy of a quick demise. Unfortunate for us all that you might only be destroyed in such a way. Gods! Don’t touch me!_

But touch he did. Lahabrea ran the back of his jagged gauntlet down the side of Thancred’s neck, then worked his invasive hand up and down the curve of Thancred’s arm until cold steel brushed the tops of his clenched knuckles. Despite fists locked in white-knuckled grip, his hand opened quite easily when Lahabrea pried his thumb beneath the curve of his fingers. Robes shuffled with movement, and the wrinkles on the bridge of Thancred’s nose hardened when he felt a tongue run upward against his palm, followed by a wet kiss. The faintest traces of warm breath on the nape of his neck. _What perversity is this?_ He wondered before lips withdrew and Lahabrea’s touch wandered back down into more traditional range. Again with the curve of his arms, the front of his neck, then to his breasts as Lahabrea knelt at his backside to sneak in a kiss against his tattoo. The hairs on the back of Thancred’s neck rose on end. And unfortunately, that was not the only thing in the midst of rising.

Repulsion mattered little when his body was so thoroughly trained to accept the incoming invasion. Hands slid down, further and further, travelling along the natural curves of his abdomen, until they reached his buckle. A rigidity shot up his spine and muscles, now fully taut, locked in place as though it would stop the muscles down below from reacting to the uninvited stimulation. But his cock was predictable. Wet kisses and hot breath. Two hands working his member until it reached full mast. Breathing raggedly, Thancred otherwise sat in silence, even when claws and lips retreated to circle around to his front.

Finally, he looked to Lahabrea, eyes both stony and smouldering with the embers of his loathing. Part of him wished he hadn’t, though, because robes hiked up to invite him underneath and he had no choice but to lean forward and accept Lahabrea’s cock into his mouth. So confident in his toy’s complacency that he would continue to place his most vulnerable appendage within range of Thancred’s teeth. The scion had done this so many times that his lips worked on their own, but this time, a temptation, normal for him but nonetheless most dark, lingered at the forefront of his mind. To snap Lahabrea’s cock between his jaw— a revenge that seemed most desirable in the moment. The Ascian had admitted it himself. He had no intention of letting Y’shtola leave this place alive, and Thancred knew his own fate would either be death or living puppetry. There was nothing, absolutely _nothing_ , to hold him back.

And so he bit down with the full force of his jaw behind it. Lahabrea gave a choked noise of agony from above. Absolute music to Thancred’s ears. Then the girth in his mouth vanished, along with the weight of Lahabrea’s robes on his shoulders, and teeth finished clamping down on air.

“Pathetic _animal!_ ” An anger he had never heard from Lahabrea before. The Ascian reappeared behind him, gripped his hair so tightly that Thancred briefly feared he would pull it straight from the scalp, and bent his head forward to unbuckle, then steal his choker. An act that baffled the scion until the pressure on his hair lifted and allowed him to raise his head again. He tried to cast a backward glance over his shoulder, lips slightly parted with labored breath, when he felt the warm leather of his choker forced into his mouth as a makeshift gag, buckle secured tightly around the back of his head. Thancred reared back in jarred attempt to wriggle out of it, but it held firm. “Fragile mortal, desperate to claw free of his fetters! Such contempt is spit upon my mercies, scion. And you will soon wish you had the ability to beg for repentance.”

Lahabrea circled around to his front, lips turned downward with contempt. Then he lunged to backhand Thancred across the cheek. If the bindings of his wrists weren’t keeping him suspended, he would have reeled from the blow. When the scion opened his eyes, he could feel the gashes left in the wake of Lahabrea’s claws. Blood that dripped onto his neck and into his mouth. Clawed gauntlet reached out toward his face again, and Thancred barely stifled the urge to flinch away. Instead, with a most delicate touch, Lahabrea brushed his hair from his eyes. There was no mistaking the ghost of his scowl, though it had lightened some, delighted to watch the scarlet trickle as it worked its way toward his victim’s collarbones. It should have been a warning of what was to come, but logics and tactics had long since receded from Thancred’s mind, muddled now with the preoccupation of his lust and sinking sense of despair. 

Lahabrea stepped away and straightened out his posture. Arms settled into a fold across his chest, though one clawed gauntlet rose up to rest against the Ascian’s cheek as though they were in the midst of a debate that required his full attention. Then he snapped his jagged fingers, and before Thancred knew what hit him, heard and felt a violent snap at his backside. The first blow was a surprise. The second lashing was a bone-rattling burn up between his shoulderblades. The third, he caught a glimpse of a shadowy whip from the corner of his eye before it came down upon the small of his back. For the first time, he jerked his bound wrists in an instinctive attempt to get away. Then he choked on a cry, feeling the skin on his shoulder split beneath the force of the next blow. The screaming began not shortly after. Snap. Snap, snap, snap. Muffled by the leather, he gave wretched cries of misery at both the pain and the knowledge that the whip would continue cracking down against his flesh no matter what he did.

Lahabrea’s lips met his own, and offered a kiss through the gag. He was smiling. The bastard was smiling, canines exposed in a vague white blur. “I see now, the way in which I erred. A beast cannot comprehend a lenient hand. They understand but a pair of concepts:” Sweat dripped from Thancred’s brow and blood spattered from the tip of the whip onto Lahabrea’s cheek. The whip cracked again, and he screamed into Lahabrea’s kiss. Eyes watered, unwilling tears sliding down his cheeks as he closed his eyes. The Ascian whispered in his ear: “Pleasure and _pain_.”

A snap, and then a kiss. Blood that rolled down the length of his back, thick and plentiful, and saliva against his lips. A mixture of his own, the salivation of a man whose throat ached with unrealized screams, and the wanton saliva of the Ascian who wanted nothing more than to mark every inch of his immobilized victim. By the time the whip finally relented, Thancred hung limp, supported purely by his wrists. Shoulders twitched. Hair stuck to his face, gaze darkened around the corners with maddening pain. His gaze, blank and vacant, watched his lap with uncomprehending stupor. Mangled nerves danced in a blaze across his back, a deep-seated agony that rattled his bones and sapped every last inch of strength he had. Lips trembled with unconscious moans, damped by the gag.

“Hmph,” came a wretched laugh in his ear. Mind stirred at the sound, barely registering Lahabrea’s presence at his side. Distantly acknowledging the firm erection that held fast in spite of his wretched state. _How?_ He thought, dully, but there were years of confusion at work, of rewarding eroticism interlocked with torture of a caliber he had once thought intense— but it all seemed to pale in comparison to the present. Lahabrea’s grin was almost physically tangible in the movement of his jaw against Thancred’s face. A hand on the opposite side of his head stroked his hair, playful and feather-light. “I have been a most tolerant master,” he murmured, “Permitting you the luxury of freedom. Maintaining our agreement… one life for many. A trade most unfavorable toward mine own ends. Allowing you to keep your wretched tongue though I have wanted nothing more than to remove it entirely. Yet what reward do I reap for my forbearance, scion?” He paused, as though fully expecting an answer, then continued with another delighted laugh, “Betrayal and resistance at every turn. Should it not have been a simple task to keep our affair private? Ah, but I forget myself; I asked too much of you. Naught is simple for an ignorant, mindless _animal_.”

_I’ll not stand to be called an animal by the likes of you,_ Thancred thought, vaguely, but Lahabrea had done a most excellent job at making him feel otherwise. There were no words in his throat. Just achingly miserable vocalizations that wrenched between the openings of the gag. A ribcage starved for breath. Blood down his neck, and drool down his chin. How was he meant to defend against such accusations when— Gods, it killed him inside to admit it— he felt like a whipped dog at Lahabrea’s heels?

Blackened robes hung treacherously close to Thancred’s ravaged backside. Every time the fabric skirted his wounds he groaned, only to let out a wilted cry when he felt Lahabrea press up directly against his flesh. Torso writhed with the last of his bodily strength, compelled to move away from the human instinct to flee from pain. But his bound wrists, still locked in place behind his neck by force unknown, would not allow for it. The Ascian played with his hair and massaged his shoulder, another tender act rendered inert when he rubbed against Thancred’s wounds and laughed at the involuntary convulsions that followed suit. “Know you now the true penalty for insubordination, scion?” Another thrust of his pelvis against bleeding gashes. Thancred’s eyes watered with a sharp sting. “Our power has been belittled time and time again before the sickening light of Hydaelyn’s chosen, but to mere men,” a third thrust, “We are _gods_. The power we wield— Zodiark’s glorious darkness— is indomitable.”

Lahabrea rubbed up against him one final time, a motion so firm that it made Thancred press the side of his head into his own arm in desperation for the slightest relief, then pulled away. He felt claws at the back of his head, and his choker loosened enough for him to open his mouth and drop it onto the floor. Then Lahabrea was back in front of him, forcing his chin up with a steely hand so that dazed eyes could meet his masked gaze. “What say you _now_ , scion?”

Unfocused, his eyes wandered. From fanged mask to the front of a robe soaked with blood, then to the corner where Y’shtola laid. Barely, he caught the twitch of her hand and eyes widened— fortunately just as Lahabrea tightened his grip to steal back Thancred’s attention. Y’shtola’s stirring had to remain unseen. That she might come to her senses and escape with her life, if the Gods were good. Senses began to sharpen, and mind spun to think of an answer that would ensnare Lahabrea’s complete attention. An impatient squeeze forced his hand, and without fully thinking it through, panted a threadbare murmur between trembling breath: “Do you ever shut up?”

Words met with another backhand to the same clawed cheek. Lahabrea bared his teeth. “The pride of man is woefully misplaced. I would almost think you _enjoy_ the punishment. How far must I push you until you break? Until you realize the fortune you once had? Tch… no matter.”

Lahabrea descended upon his lap and knelt, his legs straddling Thancred’s own. The wet of blood-slicked fabric stained his chest when Lahabrea leaned further in, hands wrapping around the back of the scion’s neck, and gave a forceful kiss that Thancred was far too exhausted to fathom rejecting. Brows pressed together, flesh against stony mask, one hand slipped down between their bodies, aglow with magick. Thancred closed his eyes and grimaced at Lahabrea’s touch, suddenly cold and slick against his cock. Gloved fingers spread lubricant across the length of his member, and at the same time, Lahabrea moved in for another kiss. Utterly dominating, made all the worse when the hand behind his neck slid down past his bound wrists to fondle his gashes. Thancred groaned and leaned further against Lahabrea’s chest to find support in the face of fingers that seemed all too quick to find the deepest wounds and press down into them to force a reaction.

_Please, don’t!_ He very nearly plead, and likely would have if there hadn’t been a tongue in his mouth. Groans broke into withered screams and Lahabrea’s other hand returned to his back, bracing against Thancred’s neck as he positioned himself on top of his lubricated dick and slowly slid himself in. A patient process that Thancred himself had never been afforded when Lahabrea fucked _him_ in the ass. Claws probed mercilessly at his back and Thancred cried out into Lahabrea’s shoulder. But the grinning bastard couldn’t have cared less. Slow, rolling thrusts. Lips, now positioned slightly higher, found his earlobes and gave the edge a cursory lick. Hot gasps of pleasure, weak screams that only grew weaker. The scion could feel his load building. A vague sense of fluttering pleasure that swirled in his groin and gut. Rising further and further, and though he begged every God he could think to beg that Lahabrea would not deny him on top of everything else, it was only natural that Lahabrea pulled out just before he climaxed. 

Collapsed fully on Lahabrea’s body, Thancred whined and gasped. The Ascian kissed his jaw, then at last returned his hands to the nape of Thancred’s neck. Slick with blood that he rubbed gently into Thancred’s skin. How much more blood could he lose before his consciousness finally ebbed away? There was only so much a man could take, and quite frankly, Thancred didn’t know whether to bless or curse the Gods for having given him such a high tolerance. “There are times,” Lahabrea purred into his ear, “When I vaguely comprehend the appeal of the creations Hydaelyn and her spawn seem ever so determined to defend from merciful annihilation. Pitiable creature. So eager to resist his fate. I look upon you and almost wish to commemorate your pathetic existence by sparing your life.”

Again, one hand slipped between their thoroughly intertwined bodies. This time, however, Lahabrea reached for his own dick and nibbled the side of Thancred’s neck as he began to work himself. All the while whispering hot words against the side of his face. “So pitiable, in fact, that I may yet perhaps be convinced to amend our agreement.”

“You,” Thancred said weakly, “have no reason to strike any bargains.”

“Pledge yourself to me, Thancred. I will keep you like the beast that you are, and— mn— you will never again see the light of day. Enshrouded in eternal darkness, hope utterly extinguished. There, I will ensure you are properly broken. I will fill you with every inch of my essence, my vessel, and beg as you might… _ahh_ … for death, you’ll not have it. And perhaps… _perhaps_ I will stay my hand against your fellow scions.”

He felt every movement of Lahabrea’s hand, each stroke, up and down against his ribs. Eyes squeezed shut, the thrum in his groin intensifying. Yet somehow, he managed a reply as he dug his brow into the crook of Lahabrea’s neck. “If that should be my fate, I have no say in the matter.” The barest of whispers. Another way of saying _I refuse to beg for your schemes with no guarantee that lives will be spared._

“Insightful creature,” Lahabrea stiffened and moaned, “though if you truly comprehend the gravity of what is to come, abandon the rest of your shame… _mn_! And grovel for clemency.” The hand that cradled the nape of his neck joined the other at their groins to lift up the robes— why sully them, after all, when there was a perfectly good man to cum all over? The Ascian’s breath shivered, and warm semen splattered against his abdomen.

_Vile._ Thancred’s lip curled back, but he hadn’t the strength to support himself any longer, and it lessened the ache on his arms to lean fully into Lahabrea’s body. “My words won’t hinder your pursuit. Though I beg of you one thing…” he trailed off to catch his breath. “Should it distract you from them for even a moment, play with me as you like. Every moment you spend with me,” he gasped, “Is a moment they might spend preparing to destroy you.”

“You’re breaking.”

“Is that what you call it?” Thancred trembled some when he felt Lahabrea’s touch wander toward his member. Delicate claws danced along his length. Quiet voice murmured, “Then I suppose I am.”

The world was dark. If Y’shtola did not stir soon, then there was little else he could do for her. An Ascian’s machinations were wicked at best, and depraved at worst, and he wondered how long he could truly hold out against prolonged torture. Thancred drank in the workings of Lahabrea’s hands, the cruel familiarity of his stroking. That was all he _could_ do, trapped in his binding web. Hips jolted with the build of his orgasm. He bit weakly at Lahabrea’s shoulder, finding purchase in his robes, simply to muffle his own whimpering. Heat, delectable heat, worked its way up his length. Limbs shuddered, and with a gasping cry strong enough to abandon his self-imposed gag, Thancred came. An electric surge of pleasure that rolled through his body, or at least the nerves that hadn’t been mangled into oblivion. And quickly, too quickly for all that he had endured to arrive at this point, it was over.

Lahabrea slid back— not fully, but just enough to shrug Thancred off and move to cradle his face between cum-and-blood slicked hands. The scion refused to open his eyes, but nonetheless leaned into one hand. The Ascian laughed, low and reserved. So disgustingly proud of his work. “Who do you serve, scion?” He paused to let the question sink in. “Now and forevermore… who do you serve?”

“Most certainly not the likes of _you_.”

Y’shtola’s voice cut them both like a piercing spear. Lahabrea dropped Thancred’s head, whose eyes fluttered to sudden life, and the Ascian shot to his feet while Thancred stirred enough to look over in the direction of her words. She struggled upright, one hand pressed against the wall, the other clutching her staff. Silent dread gripped Thancred’s insides before light flashed in the corner of his eye, and he looked over to see a brilliant barrage of magick barrel forth from the shadows. Lahabrea leapt out of its path, and hissed a most glorious “…what?!”

Thancred gasped. Not a noise of pain nor surprise, but a pleasant one as sudden relief spread across his back like a perfect ointment that sealed up any wound it touched. Then his bindings shattered, shadow blotted out by star-speckled light, and he fell, barely catching himself on the elbow with his newfound rejuvenation. Vision refocused with immediate clarity, spotting two approaching figures, and at once he knew what he needed to do. More magick enveloped his form, a soft embrace that stood in stark contrast to Lahabrea’s invasive darkness. The lashes on his back were still mending, but the magicks that washed over him wiped clean the paralyzing agony. Thancred tugged on his belt to pull it up properly with one hand, and with the other lunged for his gunblade, left discarded where he had thrown it just a few feet away.

Urianger stopped at a distance, but the second figure charged forward with sword in hand, past Thancred and toward Lahabrea’s startled, cloaked silhouette. Strength surged through his body, and as though he had never abandoned his weapon in the first place, scrambled to his feet and lunged alongside the Warrior of Darkness to thrust his blade forth and test the Ascian’s defences. “Like I said!” Thancred snapped, “Looks like their preparations are complete!”

It wasn’t his blade that cleaved through Lahabrea’s chest— rather, the Warrior of Darkness’s— but it was the strike of his gunblade that forced Lahabrea’s barrier to the side and not his front. Not enough to fell an Ascian, but enough that Lahabrea vanished through a gate of darkness and reappeared a few feet away without an immediate counterattack. Through the onslaught of magicks, stellar and elemental, the crackle of thunder through the air and the sudden parting of the earth beneath Lahabrea’s feet before stone shot upward, the Warrior of Darkness tore through the air, landing blows that otherwise would have been blocked were it not for the dual threat of two bladed warriors.

Thancred had always admired their tenacity. Every jolt of shadowed magick that pierced their defences shrugged off as though it were nothing. Steady blade that refused to be swayed by the dark flames that threatened to consume them all. Barriers arose and tended to their wounds, the slashes and burns, while their enemy had no such luxury. He could see the desperation growing in what little was visible of Lahabrea’s face.

And then it happened, with a deafening crack. A clawed gauntlet, raised to catch the Warrior of Darkness’s weapon. Leaving face exposed for the briefest of instants. Thancred brought his blade down upon Lahabrea’s head, pulling the trigger to salvage a little extra force in spite of the empty cartridge. The red mask, always cold and indifferent to the suffering it inflicted, split and shattered to reveal a single golden eye, widened as far as it could go with shock.

The Warrior of Darkness slammed their blade into Lahabrea’s side, and sent him rolling with a violent thump against the ground. Claws flexed to grip the floor, and the Ascian started to pull himself back up— when the whistle of an incoming projectile met Thancred’s ears, and he turned just in time to grab the White Auracite hurled in their direction.

How satisfying it was to see the terror in Lahabrea’s eye as Thancred bared not steel, but stone. Weakened soul was compelled toward the trapping of the Auracite, and though Lahabrea struggled to summon forth the shadows to swallow him whole, it was too late. Aether surged into the stone and seethed with such fury that it hung in the air even as Thancred released it and backed away.

They exchanged a nod, Thancred and the Warrior of Darkness, and that was all it took. Their hand, stretched forth toward the Auracite. A gathering of Aether so powerful that Thancred’s skin tingled with an electric energy. And finally, a blade that swung down upon the Auracite and shattered it— _Lahabrea—_ into a thousand pieces.

Gone. Destroyed.

As though he had never existed.

The room stood still as the dust of the Auracite fluttered through the air and settled upon the floor. A rain of annihilated soul. None moved until Thancred half-collapsed, shoulder slamming against a pillar to keep himself upright. Potent magicks could mend a body, yes, but on the battlefield, it could only go so far. Heart hammered hard in his chest, and suddenly the night felt as distant as the Source, the presence of his approaching comrades barely registered until Y’shtola said, not to him but to Urianger, “Take the other arm.”

She had begun to try and hoist him fully to his feet using her shoulder as a support, but Urianger had other ideas, it seemed. He stowed away his globe, then reached beneath Thancred to pull him into a bridal carry. The sudden movement perturbed him until he realized what was happening, then fell utterly limp into the Elezen’s arms. “I’ll allow it just this once,” he murmured, and finally, adrenaline-fueled consciousness grew dim.

* * *

“Alphinaud, get the others, would you?”

Gods, his body was sore. Sore as a man fresh out of combat, and sore as a man who had been fucked most thoroughly. There was a brief, quiet moment of ignorance where he wondered whose bed he had fallen asleep in, and who he would find beside him if he turned over. Then eyes opened, and he remembered it all with the disgusted churn of his stomach.

“No, I don’t think so.” A gentle hand pressed down on his chest when he attempted to sit up, and Thancred looked over to see Alisaie seated at his side, a most stern look on her face.

“If I’ve become an invalid, then tell it to me upfront,” Thancred replied, then braced himself on his elbows to pull himself upright regardless of her murderous, but well-intended expression.

“Awake for nary a minute and you’re already giving me sarcasm,” Alisaie said. She promptly rolled her eyes, but it was half-hearted, and he could see the relief that radiated through her posture. “I’ve never seen such a prompt recovery.”

“I imagine I have Urianger and Y’shtola to thank for that.”

Their arrival at the end of his response was curiously well-timed. Both Thancred and Alisaie glanced over to greet their familiar faces, joined by the Warrior of Darkness and Alphinaud at that. He almost glossed over the young girl who sat, quiet and small as she could make herself, behind the foot of the bed.

“He’s awake, none the worse for wear,” Alisaie said to her, alerting him to her presence, and Minfilia immediately shrunk away from his gaze as though she hadn’t been looking. “Just as I told you he would be. Will you rest now?”

“Have you not slept?” Thancred asked, brow knitting together. 

She cast him a sideways glance and shook her head. “I was worried.”

Part of him felt a profound sense of guilt. The other part was merely irritated. “Go. I’ll wake you when we’ve need of you. You’re of no help if you can hardly stand from exhaustion.”

Y’shtola quirked an eyebrow at the echo of her own earlier words. Thankfully, she said nothing. Minfilia, however, merely watched him for a moment, blue eyes piercing and melancholy, as they were wont to be, then nodded. “I’m sorry. I… I’m glad you’re alright.”

“I’m here to protect you, aren’t I? I’ve told you before; I won’t leave you.” _Not until my Minfilia returns to me_ , he added to himself, though he suspected that the girl somehow knew his thoughts. She frowned in thought, pinched her brows together, and stood to leave. On her way out, Y’shtola stopped her and whispered something in her ear that Thancred couldn’t make out. Again, the girl nodded, then left.

“How are you feeling?” Y’shtola turned to ask him.

“I wouldn’t quite say ‘none the worse for wear’,” he replied, sliding back down to lie properly in the bed and ignore Alisaie’s mildly smug look. “But there are far worse places to be, and far worse states to be in.” Thancred paused, long and hard, before he looked over and added, “Thank you for your most timely intervention.”

“I hope you realize how sick with worry we were. Alphinaud, Minfilia and I— I see no reason we had to be left behind,” Alisaie snipped, throwing an accusatory glance at the Warrior of Darkness. “I wouldn’t have forgiven any of you if you hadn’t all returned safely. My point… I am grateful to see you whole and hale.”

“Someone had to hold the fort, didn’t they?” Thancred looked up at her to meet her slight scowl.

“You mean wait idly for Eulmorians that never came.”

“You never know,” Thancred replied, “Though in that case, I must thank you both as well for keeping her safe.”

“Keep _yourself_ safe before you go thanking us for that!”

“My apologies, but I think it’s part of my job to be thrown constantly into danger.”

Alisaie huffed, and Alphinaud— the Gods bless his soul— laughed ever so quietly. At once her pointed stare whipped around, away from Thancred and toward him. Y’shtola exhaled, and took the opportunity to add, “The good news is that Urianger and I have made excellent progress on the tablet. Once you’ve recovered some, I believe we’ll be full prepared to venture further into Rak’tika. _Once—”_ she repeated, more forcefully as Thancred began to stir, “—you’ve recovered some. The Warrior of Darkness is more than capable of aiding us in finishing up the requisite tasks.”

They were capable in many things. The Twelve be praised for that. With a weary sigh, Thancred relaxed once more. “Then it might be prudent to have the room to myself for a spell,” he said, and this time, Y’shtola huffed. “I wish to join you all at the first possible opportunity.” No rest for the wicked, as they said.

“Are you certain you don’t need Alisaie to watch over you?” Y’shtola said, the faintest hint of a mildly malicious tease to her tone.

“I’ll make do,” Thancred replied, and with that, the other scions began to clear out of the room, exchanging quiet well-wishes as they went. The door clicked shut, and he found himself alone, staring upward at a dank, cavernous ceiling. For once, his mind did not wander. Eyes settled shut, and with most blissfully blank thoughts, drifted to sleep.

A solid rest, peaceful for the first time in a long time.


End file.
